A collection of short, sharp Idioms that will keep you guessing until the end.

Seth Dixon's insight:

To become truly fluent in a language, mastering idioms is often the last and greatest hurdle. In this video is show way understanding idioms are so difficult because they are often stripped of their cultural context.

For example, people smuggling contraband that knew their shipments were going to be searched would hide objects in large barrels of beans. So, to reveal a secret is to 'spill the beans.' Today, that cultural context is lost, but idioms can endure far beyond their cultural context.

If there’s one thing that Inside Out’s main character Riley hates, it’s broccoli. Or is it? Last week Pixar tech artist David Lally pointed out on Twitter that Japanese children watching Inside Out will see Riley balk at a different green veggie: peppers. But that’s not the only change made to help the film translate better....

A viral video in South Africa apparently shows pupils of Johannesburg's Curro Roodeplaat school being separated into groups by skin color after they get off a bus. The school released a statement saying it drives pupils who take English, most of whom are black, and those who take Afrikaans, most of whom are white, in separate buses. This is not the first time it's happened, and the government is relaunching investigations.

Public space has historically been masculinized and women often are marginalized in spaces, but also in terms of how much space they culturally feel they are are allowed to occupy. Here is a humorous account one woman who is demanding her space.

In a city rapidly running out of cemetery space, Jews are looking to a 2,000-year-old solution.

For Jews seeking eternal rest, the most coveted real estate on Earth lies in the soil of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the city is rapidly running out of room to bury the dead. And so it has come to pass that an Israeli burial organization has teamed with a cutting-edge construction firm to bore deep under a mountain here to create a vast underground necropolis — with ­elevators. The first phase of the new subterranean city of the dead will include 22,000 crypts, arranged floor to ceiling in three tiers, in a network of intersecting tunnels now being dug through the rocky clay soil beneath Jerusalem’s largest cemetery.

Summary: As Jerusalem runs out of space along the outskirts of the city, they must find more places to bury there dead as it is a religious tradition for Christians and Jews to be buried, so urban planning must be adjusted for catacombs in order to bury the dead.

Insight: This article is relevant to units 3 and 7 because it shows how religious traits can effect a city plan or model.

In Baltimore in 1910, a black Yale law school graduate purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood. The Baltimore city government reacted by adopting a residential segregation ordinance, restricting African Americans to designated blocks. Explaining the policy, Baltimore’s mayor proclaimed, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.”

Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or murder, as they have done in Baltimore this week, we’re tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police quality—training officers not to use excessive force, implementing community policing, encouraging police to be more sensitive, prohibiting racial profiling, and so on. These are all good, necessary, and important things to do. But such proposals ignore the obvious reality that the protests are not really (or primarily) about policing.

This article explains how folk culture can spread into pop culture, such as Chinese cuisine near the U.S Mexican Border.

This article creates a sense of folk culture and popular culture because it shows how a Chinese cuisine was diffused into America, becoming popular cultural food, and blending with other closer cultures.

Because the government of Iran is not the people of Iran. Just like the people hear in the US, we people are not like our government . The people of Iran love the people here I the US. Most Iranians are simple people living simple lives

Some members of the Jewish community in central Ohio are tossing old appliances after seven Orthodox Jewish children died in a Brooklyn, N.Y., fire caused by a malfunctioning electric hot plate used to keep food warm during the Sabbath.

These deaths were so unnecessary, both from religious and a technological safety standpoints. I do honor their desire to maintain religious purity and hope that everyone can finding a safe manner to do so; I think this will serve as a huge wake-up call to reconsider some traditions, or the interpretations thereof.

All religions and folk cultures today are all searching for ways to maintain their most values tradition in a midst of a modernized, secular world that might often scorns them as backwards. Most religions developed customs in a different technological and cultural context and finding how to do so is a balancing act...this was one of the over-arching themes of the classic film Fiddler on the Roof; Tevye, an observant Russian Jew searches for the core values behind his most prized traditions and seeks to keep observing them and his daughters continually push the limits of tradition.

Amid the celebrations this St Patrick's Day, there are also more somber commemorations taking place. In Mexico and in a small town in Galway, Ireland, they are remembering the hundreds of Irishmen who died fighting for Mexico against the United States: the San Patricio Battalion.

Seth Dixon's insight:

This is not a well-known story in the United States because it reveals the cultural prejudice against the Irish that was prevalent in the United States in the 1840s. I first learned about them in Mexico City, walking by a monument, that memorialized St. Patrick's Battalion; a group of soldiers that deserted from the U.S. army and chose to fight with their Catholic brethren on the Mexican side.

Questions to Ponder: Why are these historical events not usually mentioned in the U.S. national narrative? Why is this seen as very significant for Mexican national identity? What 'axes of identity' mattered to the soldiers in St. Patrick's Battalion?

This article is really neat, for it goes to show how the Irish culture has affected people across the world in Mexico. Since there were quite a few Irishmen who fought with Mexico against the US, a part of their culture was kept in Mexico and now St. Patrick's Day is celebrated with a special twist in Mexico (Honoring those who fought with Mexico).

This shows how Irish culture diffused across the world to Mexico, and how it affects Mexican culture. The culture has assimilated with the Mexican culture, forming Multi-Culturalism in Mexico. The Irish culture has been mixed with Mexico's culture, creating a sort of unique combination.

Darren Wilson is not the first member of a gang to be accused of something he did not do. If only the cops of Ferguson extended to their own citizens the same due process he received.

Seth Dixon's insight:

The final reports show that there was not evidence to prosecute Darren Wilson of a federal crime...but it also showed the systemic racial inequalities in Ferguson, MO. This is a very good article to use to explain what institutionalized racism is even if the official laws on the books aren't explicitly racist.

Sophiatown, in the suburbs of Johannesburg, was once known for its bohemian lifestyle and vibrant music scene. But 60 years ago, the South African government decided to clear the multi-racial neighbourhood to turn it into a whites-only area.

Sophiatown was known for their diverse culture and upbeat lifestyle. All of a sudden however, the South African government came to the city and cleared everyone from it except the whites. The whites had been complaining about their city, and the police reacted. The blacks and non whites were forced to move to Meadowlands with no street lights, identical houses, and no grocery store. The adjustment was tough on the black community, and many bread winners of families passed away due to stress. Nelson Mandela and the ANC attempted to fight back and protest the situation, but they knew a massacre would've occurred. The town now is back to normal, but it will never be the same.

This apartheid story is very interesting and shows how the non whites had to suffer in South Africa during this awful time. The struggles they went through on a daily basis were unforgettable. It is neat to read stories about it and gain better understanding for what they went through and how much society has changed over time. This topic fits right in with the cultural differences tab of the syllabus.

The artist and visual designer Yang Liu was born in China and lives in Germany since she was 14. By growing up in two very different places with very different traditions she was able to experience the differences between the two cultures first-hand.

Drawing from her own experience Yang Liu created minimalistic visualizations using simple symbols and shapes to convey just how different the two cultures are. The blue side represents Germany (or western culture) and the red side China (or eastern culture): the image above represents the boss's influence over other workers.

Her individual story might not warrant the attention it is getting, but it is challenging many people's very notion of race--and that is worth discussing. Race as a concept is part biological, but primarily a social construct that is can break down and be incredibly 'slippery.'

Dog lovers in Japan have taken grooming to a whole new level of strange by styling their dogs into perfectly trimmed and symmetrical cubes.

Japan, a country known for their love of turning everyday items and things into block form (see the 'square watermelon' for proof), are so taken by the craze that it’s proved a big hit at this Tokyo dog show.

Many people judge others just based on their name and don't even get to know them before they make assumptions about them. Allan has been treated completely differently because of his name and people are always rather surprised when they meet him because of how ethnic his name sounds. Our culture today expects certain things just based on names or how your voice sounds or what you wear.

This article is related to cultural patterns and processes by the effect of language and culture on our names, which cause others to judge us, sometimes wrongly or rather unfairly.

This is a really interesting point at how we automatically stereotype people into certain ethnicities based off their names. It shows how people put up boundaries in their mind that if something is this, then something else must be true as well.

This article explains Jeremy Lin's rise and fall to success. He started as a young basketball player with huge ambitions. He is half Chinese and Taiwanese, and a minority in the basketball world. His career hit off and he became the star player, signing contracts to play in major basketball teams.

His success and fame was soon over with hate spreading on social media and his performance on the field decreasing. This shows how popular culture, like social media and the internet can have a huge impact on the successful and famous people of today.

"For millions of Spanish speakers worldwide, Saturday nights have belonged to one cultural icon: Don Francisco. As strange as Sábado Gigante can get, the show’s Spanish-speaking audience just gets it. But to non-speakers, it’s a whole other story."

Seth Dixon's insight:

One of the most jarring cultural oddities I ever discovered when I moved to Latin America America was how everyone seemed to get Sabado Gigante but me, the North American. I've decided that it is an 'acquired taste,' but one that requires some cultural context to fully understand it.

Afghani woman wears a suit with exaggerated female anatomy in the streets of Kabul to make a statement against sexual harassment in Afghanistan - and only proves through being groped and having stones thrown at her that Afghanistan has a major problem in their views of women in society.

Unit 3 Reflection: This article really highlights the stand that women are making in order to fight for their rights and the view that other people have on them. Especially in a male dominated region such as Afghanistan, women standing up for themselves is a lot less common due to their fears of violent persecution.

Kubra Khademi, 27, is a young Afghan artist living in Kabul (the capital of Afghanistan) roamed the streets of Kabul wearing a suit of armor in order to protest against sexual harassment. A personal experience moved her to stand up in protest, but her actions were not accepted as she thought they might be. Many men were pushing and harassing her, throwing stones as well, causing her to flee her protest. She began to receive death threats for her actions, and is now in hiding. This is UNACCEPTABLE!! Women should be treated equally and fairly, and they have every right in the world to stand up in protest against sexual harassment. This article ties into cultural differences in attitudes towards gender in Afghanistan.

As part of the Yiddish Book Center Wexler Oral History Project, Leonard Nimoy explains the origin of the Vulcan hand signal used by Spock, his character in the “Star Trek” series.

Seth Dixon's insight:

Leonard Nimoy was born to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union in 1931. His connection to the Jewish people was always very important to him and this is a great example of how folk/religious cultural traits can become part of popular culture. LLAP.

folk culture vs. popular culture - Often, practices of folk culture can turn into popular culture and lose it's meaning. The example here begins with Nimoy's Star Trek character, Spock's, hand signal for waving hello. When Nimoy was younger he had seen the Vulcan culture do this hand signal for blessing others in a ceremony of something he wasn't sure of, but knew was very powerful and important. So, this is where Spock's hand signal idea originated. Because of this popular movie, over media, this spread worldwide, turning into everyone practicing this alien greeting. But, no one knew where it came from or even cared to find out that the hand gesture had very sentimental meaning to this folk culture.

One day last spring, near an old rural cemetery in southern Brazil, a black man named Marcelo Gomes held up the corners of a Confederate flag to pose for a cell-phone photo. After the picture was taken, Gomes said he saw no problem with a black man paying homage to the history of the Confederate States of America. "American culture is a beautiful culture," he said. Some of his friends had Confederate blood.

Gomes had joined some 2,000 Brazilians at the annual festa of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, the brotherhood of Confederate descendants in Brazil, on a plot near the town of Americana, which was settled by Southern defectors 150 years ago.

This is fascinating. Where some people of the United States view the confederacy as an embarrassing group of Americans in our history, other have embraced their history in culture instead of shouting it down and/or pretending they are not connected to it. Similar to the exiled fugitive Nazis in the post War period in Argentina. Men and women who did not want to live in a world where Germany was not master of all, they defected and came to south America where vestiges of that piece of their history can still be seen. This really is pretty cool

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